Sue

With my Spare Squares WIP done, it was time to dive into my orange blocks for the month. Somehow, I had enough sewing time to get them all done! Now I have one more week of the month to play with another project. Yippee!

Sometimes your weekly quilt group gets cancelled & you decide to just power through a WIP & get it done. Here is Spare Squares from Lori Holt’s book, Scrappiness is Happiness. I received this book for Mother’s Day two years ago from my son & DIL. I cut out the pieces for this quilt & it’s been sitting in my closet for almost that long. So it’s my May WIP, even though it’s not orange-centric. As a scrappy quilt, it’s got orange! Project goal complete for this month. Now to get my actual orange blocks done in the last half of the month.

This is all the orange that has happened so far: I got pieces cut for On the Town. So that’s progress.

My long-time quilt group started the 2025 RBD Block Challenge this week & made the first two blocks. I had purchased the batiks kit a few months ago at 50% off (score), so was planning to make it eventually. They decided to each order a solids kit & make it with me for our next project. So nice to have friends help you get stagnant projects going!

I only had personal sewing time on Friday, but managed to make all the rest of the blocks for Lori Holt’s Spare Squares. After posting my beginning last week, I looked at my wall & realized I had not put the last column on the wall, so now it’s the correct size for a lap, including the two rows clinging haphazardly to the bottom of my design wall. Next week: webbing the top & maybe figuring out the borders. And orange blocks.

This week was the Utah Shop Hop. I went with my long-time quilting partners to the southern half, then my hubby drove me the next day to the northern shops. It was super fun & I came away with this haul. It includes a Utah kit I’ll be getting for Christmas, a store kit I couldn’t resist, a new wool project, sale strips to do one of my classes at Garden of Quilts in Sept, fabric for this year’s Breast Cancer Awareness quilt, a small witch hanging, & various FQ’s plus prizes. Super fun! The theme was The Silver Screen so each store decorated for a different movie.

Since my pink was over & it wasn’t time for a new color, I decided to sneak in some work on a WIP. It’s a rainbow effort, so doesn’t go with my theme of doing one with lots of the color of the month. It’s Spare Squares by Lori Holt & feels very Rainbow Scrap Challenge since I’m using rainbow scraps!

Fabric ordered from Spoonflower for the 2026 Festival of Trees auction quilt & sashing bought at the Shop Hop. I’m using the pattern on the left from the book “Beyond Neutral”. I’ve had this book forever & never made a quilt from it, although I love them all, so this is the time. It’s a great pattern to show off the popcorn fabric. Now to start cutting & fitting work on this around my monthly goals.

It’s been a great week for pink. I made 6 pink blocks for my Nine Patch & Snowball, plus 5 snowballs. I decided I’d better stop sewing them together so I can have layout options. The borders are alternating LV squares & 1/2 snowballs so I made 6 of them. I figured I could make a few each month & then I’ll have everything ready to put it together when the colors run out this year.

If you’ve been following my 2026 goal of FINISH, then you know that one of my monthly projects for RSC2026 is to finish a WIP with lots of the monthly color. Yippee, because this is my second WIP finish for the month & it’s pink! My first was a second red that fell into April. This is Hope #4 & was begun as my 2024 Breast Cancer Awareness quilt, then got set aside when life happened. I make one each fall in honor of my friend who battled 3 rounds & finally succumbed. I give them to friends & family who face their own battle. I started #5 as a teaching project with a friend & then her life happened, so that’s a WIP. But this is ready for quilting!

What is this you ask? Well, the above quilt was made from a Moda kit I purchased on sale & after finishing, I assessed the giant pile of leftover fabric & said, “No, I will not put this pile into my stash.” I cut it all into 4.5″ squares & sewed up a donation top inspired by Nancy@GraceandPeaceQuilting, who makes 99 Charms quilts for donations. I had a mess of layer cake pieces left, plus “halves” of layer cakes that were 4.5″ wide because I had to cut 5.5″ squares for the quilt. So “slightly shrunk charms” made up this quilt. It goes into the box for Many Hands Many Hearts & that kit is gone!